Do you ever stop to think about how many sounds you hear in a day? Do you ever think about how many of them your brain shuts off so you no longer hear them? And did you know that those sounds could be either helping or harming you?

While any right-thinking person (especially a devoted Destiny's Child fan like myself) couldn't agree more with Beyoncé's inclusion as one of Time's 'Most Influential' people, I simply think she'd be an even stronger model if she didn't bare all, all of the time.

Who will it be this year? It could be anyone who has made the news or was in the news during the year that has less than five weeks to finish. We shall know on 14 December the name of the Time Person of the Year for 2012.

What's the hot news in town apart from Mitt Romney picking his running mate? It is of course the latest plagiarism scandal involving no less than the celebrated liberal media columnist, Fareed Zakaria. Zakaria, who is the editor at large for Time Magazine and host of a popular newsy talk show on the partner site, CNN, was found to have lifted an entire paragraph of material from another journalist without citing it or attributing it.

A mother allows herself to be photographed for the cover of Time, breastfeeding her three-year-old son, presumably in the spirit of breaking down barriers and encouraging greater freedom of choice. And how does the world respond to such a pioneer? 'Highly disturbing', 'Disgusting', 'Unnatural', 'Abusive'.

Poor David Cameron, he's not going to live this one down in a hurry, is he? Forget messing up the budget, turning off women voters, strikes across the country and a dismal showing in the local council elections. His greatest embarrassment right now, and if we dare to speculate, for some time in the future, will be his inability to abbreviate his text messages correctly. In quite possibly the highlight so far of the soap opera that is the Leveson Inquiry, ex-News International exec Rebekah Wade outed David Cameron as so far behind the times he needed advice from a newspaper editor to type his texts correctly.

What is the most successful magazine in the world? Is it Hearst's feisty Cosmopolitan, published monthly in 58 countries and 34 languages? Or Conde Nast's 120-year-old Vogue, the ultimate fashion statement in 19 countries? Or Time magazine, the first name in international news weeklies since 1923?